This invention relates generally to the field of inventions, and more particularly to a machine for drafting a patent application and process for doing same.
Applications for patents to protect inventors' ideas are filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office and with other patent offices throughout the word. Traditionally, an inventor seeks the assistance of a trained patent application draftsperson--either a patent attorney or patent agent in the United States or the equivalent in foreign countries. Without a patent application on file with the Patent Office, the laws do not allow the term patent pending or similar indicia to be placed on a product anticipated to be covered by a patent. The term patent pending is considered of importance as it conveys the patent status to potential copiers and the public. Further, many companies otherwise interested in licensing rights to manufacture from the inventor are unwilling to recognize the inventor's creative contribution in the form of payment unless an application for patent has been made to the patent office.
Patent applications have been drafted and submitted to the Patent Office on behalf of inventors by patent attorneys and patent agents since the first person was certified to act on behalf of an inventor by the U.S. Patent Office on Aug. 3, 1894. Before that time and since, inventors have also represented themselves and prepared their own patent applications to the Patent Office.
Patent attorneys, patent agents and individual applicants have a variety of methods for application drafting. In addition, there are a number of books available on patent law, patent office practice, patent examiners' procedure and even the drafting of patent applications. Further, there is a computer software application designed to assist the individual inventor in preparing a patent application entitled Patent It Yourself available from Nolo Press in California.
Patent attorneys and patent agents charge the inventor a substantial amount of money for the attorney's or agent's education, experience, and knowledge in application drafting. Often, this amount of money exceeds many thousands of dollars and is cost prohibitive for the inventor. If the inventor's expense is paid for by a corporation for one reason or another, such as an obligation to assign the invention to the corporation, the corporation's expense may be unduly burdensome when multiplied by the number of inventions on which it wishes to file applications for patent protection, in which case patent protection may not be sought for all inventions.
Further, there are problems inherent in the application process based on the inventor trying to teach the attorney or agent sufficient information concerning the invention so that proper depth and breadth of protection is sought through application for patent. It is often only after a patent has been issued and is litigated in a court of law that it comes to light that the inventor contemplated aspects of the invention that the attorney or agent failed to realize, failed to appreciate the importance of, or failed to solicit from the inventor, resulting in the aspect(s) of the invention being left unprotected--and that may be the very aspect over which an otherwise illegal copier is able to avoid liability.
The books on patent law, patent office rules and regulation, and patent examining procedure do little to help an inventor prepare a patent application. The patent application drafting books fall into two categories: 1) those written for attorneys and agents; and 2) those written for the lay person. The books written for the lay person (often written by attorneys or agents) make the explanation of drafting a patent application so difficult and involved that the lay person often throws up his or her hands in frustration and contacts the author of the book to draft the application. In addition, the books currently available include information unnecessary to the drafting of the patent application, such as patent prosecution, licensing, foreign prosecution, invention marketing, etc. Moreover, even if the inventor segregated the application information and tried to understand the application process from the book, without experience and training, certain sections of the patent application are perceived to be easier to draft than other sections. The average draft-it-yourself inventor is often too tempted to skip first to the perceived easier sections and later return to the others. This procedure using a book all too often results in an application unsuitable for filing with the Patent Office. Of course, the books written for the patent attorney or agent are often far to detailed for the inventor's needs and contain extraneous information not necessary for the patent application drafting.
The computer software designed for the draft-it-yourself inventor suffers from the same shortcomings: difficult for the inventor to understand the essentials of drafting a patent application; and the ability to skip from section to section in no set order resulting in an unsuitable application. Further no method of analysis is provided to the inventor for developing the proper understanding of his invention for purposes of the application.